


We Always Got the Fight in Us

by DeerstalkerDeathFrisbee



Category: Voltron: Legendary Defender
Genre: Canon-Typical Violence, Established Relationship, Fluff, Future Fic, M/M, Marriage Proposal
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-03-18
Updated: 2017-03-18
Packaged: 2018-10-07 03:38:41
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,737
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/10351473
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/DeerstalkerDeathFrisbee/pseuds/DeerstalkerDeathFrisbee
Summary: “Questions? Now?”“Yeah, it’s kind of important so listen up.”“Fine, whatever,” Keith brutally slashes at a drone, bits of bot clattering to the ground in his bayard’s wake.“Wanna marry me if we don’t die?”In which Lance has terrible timing.





	

**Author's Note:**

> This is totally inspired by an episode of Buffy the Vampire Slayer. I have no shame. (For Buffy fans, this fic was inspired by Xander's proposal to Anya in season 5). 
> 
> This is set in some ambiguous future where they've gotten Shiro back and have been Saving the Universe professionally for a few years. Everyone's in their twenties. 
> 
> I originally meant for this to be a short little tumblr fic but it turns out to be a little too long so I decided to post here. Hope you enjoy!

**We Always Got the Fight in Us**

            “Hey, Keith, babe,”

            “Now is not the time, Lance.” They’re running and running and running and somehow Keith isn’t out of breath yet, the bastard. Lance is in the best shape of his goddamn life (turns out saving the universe on the regular is kind of an extreme sport) and somehow Keith is still making everything look effortless. Jerk.

            Shots ring out behind them, laser bullets ricocheting off alien metal walls behind them as they race through the alien metal warship they’d been in the process of infiltrating when they literally ran straight into a Galra patrol. This has not been a great day.

            “I have two questions.”

            “ _Lance._ ”

            “One,” Lance shoots the closest of their pursuers. He gets the soldier in the knee, right on the sweet spot where the armor joint is at its weakest. The guy goes down like a bowling pin, taking out two of the guys behind him as he falls. It’s a beautiful thing. “How the fuck do laser bullets even work? Because according to known physics, little deadly laser blips shouldn’t even work. I watched a documentary on this and everything – ” Speaking of deadly laser blips, Keith grunts and grabs his collar, yanking him out of the way of one headed straight for his squishy middle.

            “Hey, okay, thanks – question two – ”

            “Talk less, run from danger more,” Keith grits out.

            “But question two is really important!” Keith still hasn’t let go of his collar, apparently not trusting him to stay out of the way of deadly projectiles on his own. Which, y’know…rude.

            “Question two can wait,” Keith ducks into a new room, pulling Lance along behind him before slamming his fist into the control panel sealing the doors behind them. They go down in a tangle of limbs, backs against the door. It begins to shiver against their spines as their pursuers pound on it.

            “So…ideas?” Lance asks in the not-quite silence as they try to catch their breaths and look around what appears to be an empty prison cell. Of course, they’d find the one room specially designed _not_ to help any potential non-Galra intruders.

            Keith shakes his head and activates the communicator on his suit, “Pidge, please tell us you’ve got an extraction plan.”

            _“Do you have the data?”_ her voice crackles over the frequency, wobbly and distorted.

            “Yes!” Lance leans over to yell into the mic on Keith’s suit, “Now get us out of here before we die!”

            _“We’re working on it, we’re working on it!”_

            And with that the line goes dead. Unfortunately, the thumping on the door remains constant.

            Keith grimaces and Lance grins weakly. It’s enough to make Keith’s face soften, if only slightly. He rolls his head to the side and lightly knocks their helmets together. “Good shooting back there.”

            “Good dragging-my-ass-out-of-danger back there. My ass likes to be nice and danger-free,” Lance gives him a weary lopsided grin, “I’d try some kind of line here, but I’m a little tired with all the running-for-our-lives.”

            “I think I can live without it,” Keith deadpans and Lance huffs indignantly.

            “Rude and uncalled-for.”

            The door rattles harshly and they tense in unison, twisting up onto their feet and crouching on either side of the doorway, weapons at the ready.

            “Hey,” Lance shouts over another clang, “Question two!”

            “Seriously?” Keith stares at him, “Now?”

            “Oh please, after a few years the imminent death thing is kind of just same-old same-old.”

            Keith just stares at him.

            The door makes a moaning, creaking, dying-metal sound that alien metal doors shouldn’t make.

            “So yeah, question two,” Lance yells over the noise – of course that’s when the door gives out and their enemies start shooting and they’re doing the fighting-for-their lives thing again. It’s turned into something of a dance over the years. Lance doesn’t know if it’s part of their bond with their lions or just their bond with each other but it’s like he’s got an extra Keith-sense that always tells him where the red paladin is going to be. They orbit each other like magnets when they fight, always right beside each other, each filling the gaps the other leaves.

            (When Lance was little he had a pair of magnet stones, the kind you throw in the air just to hear the buzzing sound they make when they collide and fall back down again – he’d been hypnotized by the stones, even after his younger sisters got bored with them and wandered away. Now, in his more reflective moments he thinks he and Keith are those stones, bound together and humming with the friction of it.)

            “Questions? Now?”

            “Yeah, it’s kind of important so listen up.”

            “Fine, whatever,” Keith brutally slashes at a drone, bits of bot clattering to the ground in his bayard’s wake.

            “Wanna marry me if we don’t die?” Lance has actually thought about this moment a lot. Well. Not this exact moment, per se, random Galra military patrols are exactly that – random. But he’s put a lot of thought into the asking-Keith-to-marry-him thing. And he figures that as much as he wants to inundate his boyfriend with flowery compliments, in reality Lance probably wouldn’t be able to get through a sappy speech without spontaneously combusting and if you overload Keith with emotional prose he kind of shuts down or runs away. Plus they’re just…not like that.

            _The first time Keith tells Lance he loves him they’re nineteen, a year into this Voltron gig and drunk on alien booze, sprawled out on the observation deck in crinkled formal wear. Keith’s head is pillowed on Lance’s thigh and Lance is wondering if Keith is drowsy enough to let him play with his hair. Keith is blinking, slow and sleepy, a little furrow pressed between his brows like he’s thinking long and hard about something._

_“What’cha thinking about?” Lance asks and Keith sighs._

_“Am I lovable?”_

_“What?” Lance isn’t sober enough for this._

_“Like…am I…lovable? Capable of being loved. That. Like…could you love me? Hypothetically. Could you love a person like me?”_

_“Yeah,” Lance breathes, feeling like he’s been punched in the chest, there is no air in his lungs, none at all._

_“Oh,” Keith pauses a minute, letting this sink in, and then yawns, curling closer like a cat, “Good. ‘Cause I kind of already love you.” And then he’s asleep and Lance is too drunk for feelings but he lies awake feeling them anyway._

So yeah, sappy proposal? Pretty much out. They’re just not like that. This is much better. Admittedly, Lance could do without all the violence and near-death, but hey, it’s them.

            He’s not really counting on Keith’s startled, “What? No.”

            “Seriously?”

            “No, I mean, no, you are not proposing to me in the middle of a near-death situation!”

            “You’re taking issue with my methods?”

            “This gives you an easy out!”

            “A _what_?”

            “You don’t have to commit to anything because we could die and you wouldn’t have to go through with it! And even if we don’t die, you can always say it was adrenaline or whatever!”

            “You’re refusing to marry me because of my _timing_?”

            “I’m rejecting the concept of this proposal.”

            “YOU’RE DEMANDING A DO-OVER?”

            “YES.”

            Lance’s communicator crackles to life and over the noise of the fight he hears Hunk’s voice saying _“Are they seriously fighting with each other while we’re fighting evil aliens? Because I really don’t need this much conflict in my life.”_

_“Guys, please focus, and Keith, stop being mean to Lance.”_ Shiro sounds deeply weary.

            _“Oh, can I officiate your hypothetical marriage ceremony?”_ Coran interjects and Lance should really remember that this is an open channel.

            _“Coran, I don’t think you know what a human marriage ceremony entails?”_ Allura sounds uncertain and also like she’s splitting her attention between their relationship drama and defending the castle.

            _“All of you nerds, shut up, and Keith and Lance, seal your helmets so Green can bust a hole in the side of this ship and rescue your pathetic asses,_ ” Pidge interrupts them all.

            “Okay, who are you calling a nerd you gremlin – ” Lance begins to protest, only for Keith to reach over and activate his helmet seal for him.

            _“I am Queen of the Nerds and all shall bow before me,”_ Pidge says firmly before following through on her threat and blasting a hole in the side of the ship.

            Lance has just enough time to grab onto Keith before they’re both thrown unceremoniously out into space and into the green lion’s waiting jaws.

…

            A few hours later, after a mission de-brief with Shiro, Allura, and Coran that goes passive-aggressively long, Keith and Lance are slumped on the floor on the Observation Deck, this time in crumpled flight suits, their helmets lying abandoned by their sides. They’re lying on their backs, shoulder to shoulder, like little kids cloud-watching.

            “So,” Lance says into the silence, “We didn’t die.”

            “Yes.”

            “Yeah.”

            “No, yes.”

            Lance blinks, “Babe, I’m going to need more of an explanation here. I see you’re doing really well with the monosyllables but if you could move up the food chain to more complex language…”

            Keith cuts him off with a kiss because that’s what he does when Lance rambles.

            “Okay, that was nice but not progress on the multi-syllabic front.”

            Keith sighs, “Yes, I’ll marry you, now that we’re not about to die. If the offer’s still open.”

            “Oh.”

            “Well?” and the slightest hint of uncertainty threads its way through Keith’s voice and Lance laces their fingers together because that’s what Lance does when Keith begins to doubt that he’s loved.

            “Yeah, offer’s still open.”

            “Cool. So we’re getting married?”

            “Yep. Space-married. Which is exactly the same as regular married but way cooler because…space.”

            “Cool…Coran’s not marrying us, is he?”

            “Oh he totally is, I want to see what he’ll do, it’s gonna be great.”

            “Oh my god.”

            “Do you think Pidge would let us use Rover 2.0 as the flower girl?”

            “Oh my _god_.”

            “I bet if we did it on Arus the Arusians would throw us a party. They really liked the sweaters I left the last time we visited. I bet that gets us enough goodwill to have a wedding in their village.”

            Keith sighs and rolls his head over until his forehead rests against Lance’s shoulder and just lets him talk, a tiny smile on his face.

**Author's Note:**

> Fic title from 'Afterlife' by Ingrid Michaelson


End file.
